Sorry, this is a poor adaptation of an e.e. cummings poem, that begins “in just spring, when the world is mud luscious”…
Is it a love poem?
Is it a delight poem?
Is it a caring poem?
Is it a mean poem?
Is it a deep fear poem?
Is it a game? Is it a warning? Is it all of these?
This poem has wandered, or stepped, or fallen, or snuck, or danced, or laughed, or snarled, or hopped, or limped through my thoughts at will for years, actually decades. And perhaps this is the thing of a poem–it incurs a different response in me each time I read it. It is not prescriptive. It is also not proscriptive. It is also not simply descriptive.
It just is. It just “be’s” (To is or not to is, that is the question-another respoken quote of another accomplished poet).
What I take from it depends on what I am thinking about at the time it appears in my mind. It may depend on if I read something about e.e. cummings of late. It may listen to, but not necessarily buy into an analysis of, a lecture on it by anyone else, because, first of all, as I have mentioned at other times, I am an unwilling student–point me in a direction, give me something to consider and let me do so, but do not try to instruct me…
Enter the dialectic? Except, is there a certainly “right way” to see e.e. cummings’s poem? For that matter, based on what I noted before about poetry, is there a “right way” to see any poem? What do you think?
e.e. cummings 
William Shakespeare
Is there a poet who gives you pause? Who? Why?
Is there a poem that gives you pause? Which? What about it catches you?
And so I finish my summer’s day thoughts, August 14, 2021. On a day when, as the title hinted, I don’t find much around on earth as humans have it, that is luscious these days.
So now I stop.
Almost.
“Do not rebuke mockers or
they will hate you;
rebuke the wise and they will love you.
Instruct the wise and
they will be wiser still;
teach the righteous and
they will add to their
learning.”
Proverbs 9:8-9
whereIwonder&why 